KRAUTHAMMER: Well, everybody is getting a worse deal. If the providers are, that means the doctors aren’t getting their usual payments, which means they have to see much more patients which means they spend less time which means the care is inferior. That means hospitals are reimbursed at a lower rate, which means some of them will go out of business. Or they’re going to have to consolidate so there will be less choices, and thus the consumer in the end is the one who gets hurt because the only way that insurers can keep the costs down on premiums is to restrict the choices and to restrict the network, which is exactly what they are doing.

BRET BAIER, Host of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report”: So when you hear the president this thing is working —

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, it’s working in that it exists. It breathes. But if it’s hurting the doctor, it’s hurting the hospital, it’s hurting the patient, it’s hurting the economy, it’s going to cost a fortune. I love the way the president says health care costs are reduced, as if there is any relationship between a reduction which occurred during a recession and a health care implementation which occurs today. So it couldn’t possibly have retroactively affected last year’s numbers. I mean, he makes this stuff up with the brazenness that is almost admirable.